Frederick William Pavy

Who was Frederick William Pavy?

Frederick William Pavy was a British physician and physiologist and the discoverer of Pavy's disease, a cyclic or recurrent physiologic albuminuria.

He was born in Wroughton in Wiltshire and educated at Merchant Taylors' School. He entered Guy's Hospital in 1847. There he worked with Richard Bright in the study of Bright's disease or kidney failure. He graduated as M.B. after five years from the University of London and M.D. the following year. He became Lecturer of Anatomy at Guy's in 1854 and of Physiology in 1856. In 1859 he was appointed Assistant Physician at Guy's and full Physician in 1871.

He was a leading expert in diabetes, and spent almost 20 years trying to disprove Claude Bernard's theory of the glycogen-glucose metabolic cycle.

He was made president of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London in 1893 and President of the Pathological Society of London the same year. He delivered the Goulstonian Lectures in 1862 and the Croonian Lecture in 1878 and 1894 to the Royal College of Physicians. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863.

He had married Julia Oliver in London in 1855. They had a daughter Florence.